Does celebration of Festival calls for animal sacrifice?

Norbu Lama writes in to Arunachal Diary,

Celebration of festival is life of one's culture and certainly we must celebrate our festivals with all traditional ways. But the animal sacrifice in public, specially in presence of foreign guests and media people from outside, gives an impression that we are educated barbarians. If we look into the history of any community or society we will find that all were once tribal societies like us and their culture and traditions were similar. Others have improved. Can't we?

It has made me ponder, does celebration of festival indeed call for animal sacrifice? Can we make do without animal sacrifice and celebrate the festival with same pomp and gaiety? I guess we can.

What do you say?